


Snowbound

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Demands of the Qun, Injury, M/M, Non-Chronological, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: "You know what to say if you want to stop."

  "I do." Dorian sounds like he's swallowing something bitter. "I do not believe we have a word to alter things like we have one to end them."
On a mission in the Emprise du Lion, Dorian is grievously hurt. The wait for help leads Bull to a truth he hasn't quite confronted.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sildominarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sildominarin/gifts).



> I sort of ended up combining two of your requests. Have a lovely holiday season!

###### Winter—Emprise du Lion

 

When Dorian goes down, Bull's only saved from the next blow coming at him by Sera's timely arrow. A swish past his head, a thud into the terror demon's gangrel form. It rakes at the snowy ground a couple of times and is still.

Adaar leaps down with a howl and cleaves into the arm of the pride demon that struck Dorian. Her boots leave red marks as she goes, on an unerring path through the spreading splash of his blood. Bull grabs his axe haft again as the weapon slowly tilts downwards in his hands.

Her next swing lops off the spiny-scaled arm. The demon's roar nearly drowns out her sustained, hoarse scream.

"Get him!" Sera's call is followed by the twang and whisk of another arrow. " _Bull_! Quit staring like a nitwit, they'll trample him!"

Dorian. Not the demon. Reality clamps back into place. He tears his eye off the scarlet of Dorian's blood spilling through the drift where he fell. Lightning shears from the demon's palm through the pale, misted air, and Adaar ducks for the questionable safety of a rock behind her.

Taking his chance, Bull dashes towards Dorian. Across ice-slick rocks and churned snow, he weaves closer while Adaar lays into the still-standing monster in repeated chops of her greatsword, aided by Sera's arrows from above.

Dorian's flank is a great ragged gash. Even if the demon's claws missed his guts, they opened his hip to the bone. His breath runs in tremulous drags.

"Easy now." Bull yanks off his own scarf; he can't move Dorian until he's stanched the bleeding. Some piece of him might stay behind in the snow if Bull shifted him now. That's not a great exaggeration.

His medicine kit is, of course, in his pack at the top of the hill. The open rift smoulders at its foot above the hot springs.

Adaar jams her blade under the plating in the demon's chest and twists, wrenching whatever inner structure keeps the thing standing. It crumples into dissipating chunks that fade before they can smother her. It is, at least, the last of them.

"Sera!" Bull shouts, tugging at the torn edges of Dorian's clothes. Sensible warm layers, all of them in the way. "Get my kit!"

"Getting it!" Blessedly fleet, she springs upslope towards the stash of their equipment.

The rift knits at Adaar's gesture, sucking the Fade's unearthly colours out of the air. The hot pools send up their swirling vapours.

The restored sunlight lifts none of Dorian's ashen pallour. One of his eyelids slips open to show a glassy, unfocused green eye.

—

The circular watchtower has been abandoned by the Orlesian army and since ransacked by unknown parties. All the same, the crude hearth on the second floor works. There's a mess of emptied crates to use for firewood, and even a cot that once belonged to whatever lonely guard was stationed here.

"He needs a healer, boss." Bull fights not to show the pressure in his throat. "If we try to carry him back across the bridge, he won't make it that far."

Long habit makes him always pack some array of healing herbs and simple surgeon's tools, but he's not a trained physician. This detour into the highlands of the Emprise du Lion was supposed to stay within the net of Inquisition camps, but the unknown rift opening on top of them made it plain that they've strayed off course.

Adaar believes she's found them on the map. The watchtower is marked on it, or at least a structure convincingly resembling the tower is.

Adaar frowns down at Dorian, who lies in the cot wrapped in a cocoon of their collective spare blankets and cloaks. Blood loss, wound rot or the cold—any of the three could claim him. Bull is calm by grace of a life spent learning control.

"There's a proper road two miles to the south. If I can get to it, I can reach the bridge outpost by nightfall." She rummages through her pack as she speaks. "From there we can send a rider to the Tower of Bone."

That's a lot of uncertainties, but Bull doesn't voice that. He makes a face at her back. He ought to be going with her, but Dorian is like a tender hook in his flesh. All their fates hang upon her, and he gave his word to guard her.

In these winding months of the war, he's given many other things of himself. His ties to the Qun for the lives of his men. Whatever part of him that now rests with Dorian.

"I'll watch her." Sera tilts herself up from his blind side, the straw-like thatch of her hair giving way to a steady, cinched stare. "I can skewer 'em long before they're in your range, anyway."

"I'll make you that bet," Bull says.

"Some other day, yeah?" Her cheek dents under her teeth. "You watch _him_ now. Till we get back."

Adaar stands, her sword slung across her back, a canvas bag with some provisions and her blanket bound crosswise over the scabbard. Light gear for a quick journey. Bull returns her nod, lets Sera knuckle his arm. They draw up their hoods and disappear down the swaying stairs.

The water kettle he hung above the hearth begins to hiss. One of the shutters on the window has splintered: it reveals a snowbound sky, heavy with clouds. He should dig through the lower floor for something to cover the gap.

Instead, his mind tugs him back to the fight: Dorian went in too boldly, trusting his barrier too much, to try and rot the demon's form. Bull's told him a hundred fucking times.

"Stay close, you foolhardy bastard." Stay back. Stay where Bull could keep an eye on him. No such thing as a mage made for melee, not even Vivienne with her spellborn blade. For sure not Dorian, always too eager for offence at the expense of shielding himself.

He bled all the way to the tower. Bull sewed sparse stitches that he may cut out later, just to hold Dorian's savaged side in alignment. The wound is tightened with linen, and Dorian hovers between sleep and delirium.

Bull scoots a crate over to the cot to make a seat for himself. He pours fine-ground grain and chopped peas into the kettle; Dorian needs some food in him, and broth works best. The motions of caretaking anchor him.

Night will come on fast. With it, Sera and Adaar will need to slow their pace. Adaar said, _before nightfall_ , but she's more given to brazen optimism than Bull is.

Dorian's breathing is the only sound that cuts the silence. In and out, in slow shallow rasps. Every breath renews Bull's hope and feeds his dread.

"Come on, 'Vint." He pulls Dorian's left hand from under the covers, for no other purpose than closing it between his own. "You're too damn contrary to die from some demon swatting you."

Dorian might shift at that, or it might be the play of the firelight. Bull can picture what he'd say, though. How brittle that knowledge seems. Pieces of a stranger, fallen into place one by one to make up someone that's anything but.

"I'm gonna get the broth," he says to Dorian's grey, quiet face. "Don't wander off."

 

###### Spring—Skyhold

 

"You are miles away." Dorian sets a full cup of wine on Bull's nightstand with a pointed chink. "Is this a common aftereffect of sex with you, or is it specifically for me?"

Bull picks up the cup with a languid hand. Dorian made free with the contents of his eclectic stash of alcohol: Rowan's Rose, 9:17 Dragon. Bull suspects he won the bottle from Rocky, who might've just been glad to be rid of it.

"Depends if it works for you," Bull says just to hear Dorian groan. He brought Dorian off twice, once with his mouth, once with his fingers, before letting Dorian work him into a too-sharp climax. It lingers pleasantly, though.

"The thought of wearing you out?" Dorian perches on the bed, dressed again in his breeches and loose-laced shirt. "Why, do I hear a hope of bedding me again?"

"Hasn't lost its shine yet." They've fucked on two distinct nights; this is the first time in a bed. This time, Dorian even stayed past the merest gasping aftermath. "Besides, it gets better with practice."

"I had no idea." Dorian's merriment slants to sarcasm. "I assume that should entice me to return to your bed." In the light of the single ceiling lantern, his expression is more shadow than shape.

"Plenty of things that we haven't tried out." The sheets smell of them both, sweat and spend, the fragrant powder in Dorian's hair, rubbed into the pillows. "You seem like a guy that's got range."

" _Fasta vass._ " Dorian blows out a sigh. "So. Continued acquaintance with your admittedly impressive cock requires submitting myself to endless queries. I don't think I've ever slept with a man with such curiosity."

"Glad that you approve of some part of me."

"Well." Dorian's fingers tap on the wine cup. "It would depend on the use you're planning for it. All this talk of conquering and dominating. Not that I'm _disappointed_ in the performance so far, but one expected... more, perhaps."

The words unfurl carefully despite their caustic tint. Bull doesn't fill the silence, unlike Dorian probably expects.

That first time Dorian came to him in mock exasperation and almost unwilling fascination. They still war in his bearing, but they don't fill out the scale of his sentiments anymore.

Bull could quell Dorian's concern, if he were sure that it is concern.

"I'm not overly fond of the quintessential act of coitus, as it were. It shows a certain lack of imagination."

"I'll only fuck you if you want me to fuck you." Content as he was half sprawled on the bed, Bull sits up. Damned Common and the way it smushes together the meanings of _sex_ and _sticking a cock into something_.

Tevene, at least, is joyfully specific about which act is meant. On the other hand, Bull knows what Tevinter nobility thinks of men who prefer other men. Dorian's not half discreet or cowed enough for their comfort.

Dorian twists back towards him. His eyes are deeply shadowed in the twilight. "You'd still share my bed another time?"

"We've never actually tried out your bed."

Despite his scoff, Dorian softens a notch. "Tell me then, Iron Bull. What manner of delightful debauchery might we commit in it?"

He's climbed into Bull's lap, his shirt carelessly off one shoulder and Bull's mouth smarting from kissing him, when a knock sounds on the door. Bull barely musters civility at the dusty messenger when he sees the seal. It's the signet of a made-up merchant family that serves as a front for Ben-Hassrath operations in Orlais.

If he's tense when coming back to the bed, Dorian says nothing. Bull strokes them both off, Dorian biting into his shoulder, their tempo slow and somehow defiant, before he even opens the letter.

 

###### Winter—Emprise du Lion

 

Sunset moves in fading spears of russet and copper across the wooded hill outside. Even if Sera and Adaar made the swiftest time they could, they have only just reached Judicael's Crossing.

Bull spoons broth into Dorian's parched mouth and holds his hand while it begins to grow warmer. Ruddy spots flush his cheeks. The room is chill with long disuse and the draft from the broken window, but Dorian burns. The fever has to be kept in check: if the insides of the wound fester, the inflammation will seep into his blood and poison it.

Bull has buried a too-great proportion of all the friends he ever made. The spectre of death crouched in the corner doesn't freeze him, at least as long as he has something to do to keep it at bay.

"Don't make me roll you into a snowbank," he murmurs, pressing a cold cloth on Dorian's cheeks. "Even if it helped, you'd never let me forget it."

 

###### Late Summer—Skyhold

 

After a burning ship drags his old life beneath the waves along with its smoking wreckage, Bull does his best to stay steady. He tells Adaar the things she needs to know—for a Vashoth, she's quite at grips with the Qun. She hardly bats an eye when the Ben-Hassrath come for him with _saar-qamek_ on their knives, only asks if he wants extra eyes at his back. Leliana could arrange it, he knows.

He says no. Keeps close to his axe and his boys. Makes Cassandra spar with him to see how far he can drive her before she cries for mercy.

She refuses to give him the satisfaction, of course. That's why he likes her.

One night, though, Dorian stops in the middle of a promising tumble and flattens his hand over Bull's ribs. They've kept up the habit of occasional romps, even past the misrouted alliance with the Qun.

A part of Bull values it. The fact that Dorian will still come to him, prickle and pout and jest, and share a fuck and a drink, is the strangest sort of reassurance.

This time, Dorian jabs his fingers into a fresh bruise none too gently. The flinch that Bull stamps down still jerks through his muscles. Then Dorian's hand is under his chin, tipping it down to make Bull meet his gaze.

"Should I have a word with our esteemed Seeker? She seems to be handling you rather roughly as of late."

"No worse than I handle her." Bull makes himself grin. He may be bowed above Dorian on the bed, but Dorian's scowl looms like a thunderhead.

"Is this why you haven't let me touch you?" Dorian scrambles into a sitting position, skewing the pillows. "I'm not scorning the virtues of your rope artistry, but one notices a pattern."

"It's not that simple." That Dorian appreciates a bit of artful restraint in bed has helped. Having a thing whose rules Bull absolutely knows has helped. In a manner not unlike letting Cassandra wail on him after frustrating diplomatic meetings. He can take it.

"It seems to me that it is," Dorian says, a little sharply. "I know a thing or two about wanting to punish yourself for choices that you feel you should have made."

He's warm from Bull's own skin. The words fall like glittering icicles, bursting into shards.

"Listen." Bull leans back, leaving an empty expanse of bed between them. "Not that I don't appreciate the gesture, but—"

"Ah." Dorian's knees curl up before him. "But you come to me for a hand of cards or a turn in the sheets, not my opinions on your... situation."

"That and some help with the world-saving, yeah." The attempt to prop the conversation up with levity is doomed as it leaves Bull's mouth.

"Then I suppose we'll return to the latter at the Inquisitor's behest." Dorian rises, naked and wrapping himself in an impression of nonchalance. Bull can't fault him, when he just did the same.

 

###### Winter—Emprise du Lion

 

Bull adds another crate to serve as a footrest at the head of Dorian's cot. The cot is too narrow to be shared, the floor too drafty to sleep on, so he settles himself as near as he can. His axe fits between his seat and the cot, easy to tug along as he comes to his feet. Though the Inquisition has mostly cleared the red templars out of this region, Bull isn't about to trust in _mostly_ on a night like this.

If something that can feel an axe blow takes Dorian tonight, it'll step over Bull's corpse to do it.

 

###### Autumn—Skyhold

 

It's a rest day in the harvest season, and so the Herald's Rest is crammed to the rafters with thirsty castle folk. The Chargers may even have had to snap and jostle for possession of their usual table. The bench spanning one long side is piled full of Bull's laughing, shouting mercenaries.

That Dorian is sitting among them shouldn't baffle him. Sera's there, too, and those two get along better than they should have any right to. After several wary encounters, Krem seems to be slackening his guard around his fellow Tevinter, and some of the others are following suit.

So, Bull gets a pint from Cabot and heads towards their noisy company. He just has to keep setting his feet, and eventually he'll be on firm ground again. Eyes on the far end. Don't look down.

"Hey, watch where you're going!"

Lukewarm liquid splashes against his side. A scout, shorter than his shoulder and drenched in ale, balks away from him as he jerks into a stop.

"Damn." Shoving his drink onto the nearest table, he fishes for a rag on his belt. "Sorry."

The startled scout begins a damp sort of sentence when another soldier looms up behind him. She locks her eyes on Bull, her mouth a contemptuous curl, and tips his ale off the edge of the table.

"Don't talk to my friend." She's taller than her elven companion, bulky from swordwork, but the clear disdain on her face rules Bull's attention.

"Something the matter?" Spilled ale soaks into his boot. He's been lazy about oiling them. He's also stood in worse messes.

"You're the matter," she says. Lucid gaze. Not many drinks in her yet. "Blighted traitor that you are."

Shit. Is she Ben-Hassrath? Her accent's thoroughly Fereldan, and he'd dared assume that the two months of nothing since the first attack had been a true quiet, not a false lull.

"Interesting thing to say in a full common room." His voice stays casual. Good; some part of the training still works for him.

"Rua," the scout says, a warning. The table from which she rose is stirring into murmurs of varying hostility. "It isn't a big—"

"Bad enough when we had a bloody Qunari at Her Worship's ear. Now we have a turncoat. What oath did you swear that she thought good enough?"

What oath, indeed. So her grievance isn't the Qun but his turning from it. As he did, or was made to do. He makes himself calm. They're dragging more eyes towards them, conversations rippling into bemused halts. "That's the Inquisitor's business, I'm pretty sure."

Whether her grudge is personal or philosophical won't matter in a moment. She's got a tableful of variously drunk soldiers behind her, and the Chargers are fast clueing on to the brewing argument.

A brawl very rarely needs a reason. It only makes up excuses later.

"You're asking me to trust an oathbreaker with her life?" The soldier named Rua spits. 

Chairs scratch at the floor in the Chargers' corner. _That's our chief you're talking about, arseface_ —Bull shoots up a warning hand towards them even as his heart sinks.

Then the fuming soldier jolts upright and, as if gripped by the hand of some ghostly giant, is slung first upwards and then sideways into a support column. She smacks against it with some force, her feet kicking as she dangles there.

" _Enough_." Dorian holds out one fisted hand before him. His voice is steely, his stark Tevinter vowels in full evidence. Not a soul in the tavern can doubt whose spell holds Rua pinioned to the column. "I don't ordinarily entertain the opinions of fools and fanatics, but I'll make an exception."

"Bloody, horse-fucking Tevinter—"

"Oh, there's a fresh accusation. I limit my carnal fascinations to fellow thinking beings, however."

You could hear a straw snap in the common room. Bull looks at Dorian: his posture is smooth and controlled, not the smallest shiver of effort marring the picture.

"You insult a man who left everything he knew to serve our cause. The Herald's cause belongs to all of us here, no?"

"Most of us don't change our masters every time the wind turns." Rua seethes impressively for someone hanging half her height off the floor.

Bull should open his mouth, say something to make them laugh, stomp out the sparking slow match of the crowd's agitation. Magic is a touchy subject—especially Dorian's blatant, consummate display of it.

That's why it's working so far. He took the room by surprise.

"Then you shall be happy to know Iron Bull has never wavered in his loyalty to our stalwart leader." A hum of agreements from the Chargers bolsters Dorian's words.

"Who are _you_ to vouch for that, oh lord magister?" someone calls from the side.

Bull sees Stitches shrug his way forward beside Dorian. Behind them, Krem gets to his feet.

"More aspersions cast at my person! The sun must have risen this morning."

A line is being drawn across the room. Men and women at arms will scuffle and brag, goad and cockfight, but Bull's adamant that the Chargers keep their peace with the Inquisition soldiers. A glance at Krem confirms what Bull's glimpsed: his men are closing ranks around Dorian.

"However," Dorian says. "I, too, somehow remain in the Inquisitor's counsel. I've slogged down half the mud paths you call roads in this country in her company. Iron Bull's had countless chances to harm her. I'd let you conclude if he _has_ , but allow me to spell it out for your minute comprehension: he is worth ten of you put together."

A touch clichéd, but sweet. Dorian's also holding a grown person aloft with his mind. Bull wants to chuckle, but it jams in his throat.

"I'm going to let you down now." Rua's black look certainly hasn't stymied Dorian. "If Bull feels gracious enough to accept them, you may make your apologies."

With a twist of his hand, he drops the spell. Rua founders onto the floor, gasping but unharmed. A muscle jumps under the bare skin of Dorian's arm; Bull doesn't think anyone but he is looking.

All the while, Dorian's poise never cracked. The noise around them swells and flows—Dalish laughing, Krem quipping something to general, unwinding amusement. The soldiers huddle around their table and their berated companion. Bull's going to have to unruffle some feathers later.

It's one more task. One more reason to advance. One more thing to fill his day.

Then Bull looks back at Dorian, who returns his gaze with a slight jut of his chin. _Challenge my actions. Tell me I should've let it slide._

The whole weight of what Dorian just did here soaks into Bull like thickening rain into wool, a trickle at a time.

—

"Pray think nothing of it," Dorian says later on the parapet, with the two of them sheltering from the wind in the lee of a tower. "If we were in Minrathous, I'd have had to break bones to make my point."

"The 'Vints really don't do subtle, do they?"

"The whole reign of Archon Amareta was brought down in flames with a sliced apple on a windowsill. Not a poisoned one, mind. But in general, we prefer flair to discretion." Dorian braces his weight on the stone wall. Bull isn't sure how to behold him, exactly. A fracture is snaking through his understanding of Dorian, but he can't yet see what it'll reveal.

"You're gonna find this in front of you." Bull tries for a sensible tone. "Too many of 'em still take you for some posturing northerner."

Not the Chargers, though. Not after this evening.

"My friend, I _am_ a posturing northerner. I rather relish the role."

Today, Dorian used it—flagrantly—to stand up for him. To defend him to a teeming tavern. It's not as if Bull hasn't weathered worse, but there's a tight knot of warmth in his throat that flares whenever he looks at Dorian.

"Didn't have to, on my account. We just play cards and fuck and try to save the world now and then, huh?"

An ebb of laughter from Dorian. "Something like that."

The late dusk lingers, spilling a violet glow across the high sky. The silence that falls is not uncomfortable. Bull wonders at which point they learned to slip into each other's pauses, not to break them but to simply be in them.

"If you wish, we can still do that." Dorian raises his head. Bull shifts away from the wall, to stand up properly. "Debate philosophy. Fornicate on occasion. That doesn't have to change."

The summer has already broken the pillars of his world. The Qun declared him dust and ash. He finds that he's still flesh and bone and breath. The paradox remains.

And the guarded sincerity of Dorian's words burns Bull in the same clean, consuming way that Dorian's stand in the tavern did. He doesn't know its meaning.

"Yeah. I'd like that."

One solid thing among the chaos. Sure, that thing is Dorian's tempestuous company and damned great sex, but Bull's good at making the most of his options.

Dorian smiles, without caprice, without flair, and they breathe in the falling night side by side.

 

###### Winter—Emprise du Lion

 

The sound of Dorian's sawing breaths brings Bull out of musing. The oilcloth he nailed to the window is laden with clinging snowflakes, the sky hidden in grey. Dorian's skin is dry and hot, his lungs labouring. When Bull kindles a lantern and unwraps Dorian's hip from its dressing, the flesh around the wound is swollen. Not yet verging on necrotic. Bull notes all this with precision, letting himself neither stop nor rush.

He presses a poultice of elfroot and shepherd's mint on the wound, using most of the latter herb left in his bag. Sputtering and choking, never fully stirring, Dorian drinks a cup of lukewarm ghostreed tea, which Bull hopes will ease his breathing.

Then he falls still again. That's almost worse to watch than his discomfort. Bull is used to Dorian as exuberantly animated: pacing, gesticulating, chewing on quills and tapping fingers. His sleeping face seems a waxen mask.

Bull hasn't let himself think the thought that froze him when Dorian took the blow. It sits near like a brimming jug, waiting to be poured.

If Sera and Adaar haven't come, they may not come before morning. Only a hunter's path leads up to the watchtower, which once guarded some logging camp or maybe a silverite mine deeper in the hills.

If the inflammation won't settle, Dorian may not see morning.

He allows himself this: running a hand through Dorian's hair, thick and tangled with sweat.

"Stay with me," he mutters, the words echoing in the quiet. "Just a bit longer."

 

###### Winter—Skyhold

 

Dorian's legs tremble with the effort of straddling Bull's lap. His gasps break against Bull's mouth as he raises himself forcibly, claiming a kiss, a wet, toothed press of contact. Candles flicker on the bench by the bed, their flames tossed by the little drafts their movements cause.

Bull lays a hand on the small of Dorian's back. It's a limit, a tease, more than a support.

He trails a spit-slickened finger of his other hand up Dorian's inner thigh. Surging against him, Dorian uses his bound wrists to brace himself. Bull tied them firmly in front of him, then had Dorian slide his arms around his neck. They're close, face to face, all of Dorian open to Bull's hands.

When Dorian half slunk to his door, brooding over some conundrum of an _arid, academic nature, I'd rather not bother you with it_ , Bull thought a mellow mood was called for. Something to unwind them both. He's beginning to reconsider.

Dorian's not fighting him, not like those times when he wants to be bent and worn out and pleasured until all his thoughts leave him. He latches a clumsy grip to the back of Bull's neck and presses his mouth to his jaw, one kiss after another. A moan unravels from him when Bull palms his cock.

"Hey. I've got you." Dorian's hair tickles his nose. He kisses it anyway, feeling Dorian go still and breathe in.

"I know." Dorian laughs, reedy. "I know regrettably well." A deep, rattling breath; Bull lets him take it. "Now, if you'd please get me off before my arms go to sleep."

So, Bull obliges him. It's good, good to feel Dorian crest his pleasure and ride it out, to be washed out by that same rush until they rest against each other, soft and sated.

His fingers dwell on Dorian's wrists as he undoes the bonds, checking with undue care for any skin rubbed raw. There's none; the rope's smooth, and Bull's diligent with his knots.

Dorian reaches for his shirt, this time dropped so it hangs off the headboard. They've been doing this variously for nearly a year, and in that time Dorian's got far less careful about the placement of his things around Bull's quarters.

"Bull," he says, his voice emerging from the linen as he slides the shirt on. "I... may have made a liar of myself."

That's rather frank for Dorian, and so Bull follows his example in gathering his own clothes. "Right. I'm not really in the business anymore, but what are we spinning then?"

"'We'?"

"That sounded like an opening for 'help me make up some shit to get me out of this'. Just trying to be a friend."

"A friend." Dorian makes an unfathomable face, tilting it quickly to the side, away from Bull. "I suppose I am. I suppose I made that promise, and..." A buckle clinks as he pulls on his breeches.

Bull frowns while tying the laces of his trousers. Maybe it's a good thing Adaar wants them on the field for a change; some new trouble has cropped up in the Emprise du Lion. Dorian's been cooped up in Skyhold since First Day, and the winter is growing old.

"You are." That's easy to say, at least. "Don't mean to be a sap, but that stands."

Folding his arms, Dorian stands with his back to Bull, a dark outline against the candles. "Bedding your friends doesn't pose a problem to you. You've made that clear."

"Wasn't always that way, but close enough." Bull has loved people and fucked people, both in ample measure, but not often the same people. The south blurred the line, and he didn't always make an effort to redraw it.

"I may have—" Dorian opens a fist, then remakes it. "I told you things would not change. That you could come to me for the comforts we can give each other, and that would be that."

The words tap on Bull's mind like pebbles clattered by an incoming groundswell.

"I'm afraid I can't claim that with a clear conscience anymore." Dorian's not looking at him. He wants to reach out and turn that set chin.

"You know what to say if you want to stop." They have an agreement with clear rules, and ones Dorian readily accepted. Bull had thought maybe both of them found it a relief, though Dorian's relief was likely of a different kind.

"I do." Dorian sounds like he's swallowing something bitter. "I do not believe we have a word to alter things like we have one to end them." Then, finally, he meets Bull's gaze, and Bull wishes he hadn't. "I should take my leave. I'll see you in the war room when Adaar calls for us."

This was meant to be one solid thing in the unrest of his own being, and now it seems to be swirling away in Dorian's wake. 

 

###### Winter—Emprise du Lion

 

"Bull!"

Startling him out of a doze, Adaar comes bolting up the stairs and through the hatch gap in the floor. Dawn spreads its omen across the eastern sky, light leaking in faint slants into the guard room. Her hood is covered in breath-frost, her boots clumped with snow.

Fuck. He must've fallen asleep. To his luck, embers shimmer in the hearth, enough to make a pool of pale warmth that reaches the cot.

"Yeah, here." He spares Adaar a glance before bending his stiffened left leg to the floor, already leaning towards the bundle of blankets. Dorian's not a small man, but he seems to vanish into the pile.

"I brought a sleigh. And a mean-tempered horse, so Sera's out below crabbing right back at it. We sent for a mage healer, but if we can move Dorian, it's better to—how is he?"

A thin waft of breath touches his palm. Dorian's cheek curves warm under his fingers, the skin sallow but much cooler than the night before, tacky with dried sweat. He takes in all these minute signs before daring to even exhale his relief.

"I'll put on some water," Adaar says in a fit of diplomacy, and retreats the two steps she can towards the hearth.

On a second of reflection, Bull doesn't want to know the look on his face that made her sidestep.

He doesn't get to unspool the thought any further when Dorian's face shifts against his hand, dry throat flexing into a series of coughs. Bull slides an arm under his shoulders to ease him up. "Hey, hey. Take it slow. I'm here."

"I think I am done—" Dorian swallows, but the sound of his voice frees a pressure lodged in Bull's ribs. "Done rushing into things, for the time being."

"You say that now." Bull lays the backs of two fingers against Dorian's neck: his heartbeat's fast but not arduous. Sleep has, for now, broken his fever. "When you're back on your feet, I'll be peeling you from the backs of behemoths soon enough."

One of Dorian's eyes slits open, glossy in the light. Adaar clacks a piece of firewood on the edge of the hearth, then rustles it properly into place. Dorian puts a slightly quivering hand on Bull's face. "Is that so?"

"Look, 'Vint," Bull says, with unwonted feeling. "I didn't sit up here all night so you could _not_ get better."

"Well." Dorian coughs again. "I am flattered by your regard."

There's no word to change what they are to each other. No command magical or mundane. Lives that have been steered together by pressing circumstance may wind on side by side and then diverge again.

Turning Dorian's hand, Bull lets his mouth linger on his knuckles. "With the amount of scrapes you get in, I figure I'd best stick close."

_Stay with me. Just a bit longer._

"I see." Dorian strives for focus. "What exactly am I to take from your sentiments, Bull?"

This is hardly the best possible place or time for the conversation. Dorian's blurry and Bull himself nearly sleepless. "That whatever way things go from here, I want you around. A better chance of figuring them out together."

"Are you suggesting I'm the harbinger of this upheaval?"

"The root cause of it. Least you can do is help me solve it."

Dorian fumbles his fingers in between Bull's, in a skewed but firm grip. Bull should let him sleep for the while it'll take them to make breakfast and load the sleigh.

"I suppose I can't honourably do any less." Dorian tugs his head down, and Bull bows to let him lay a dry, whispery kiss against his brow. "It all sounds like a fantastic disaster in the making."

"Call me a fool," Bull says, "but I plan to stay and find out."

"You are a fool," says Dorian, "but that might make two of us." With that, he slides back into the blankets, his hand clasped in Bull's, and relaxes into untroubled sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Toft for much-needed cheerleading and proofreading.


End file.
